Pfahler hopes to hit road, get mileage out of laughs

July 27, 2000

If Walle Pfahler gets his wish, he'll be hitting the road in his RV within the next couple of years with his wife, looking for parking spaces at comedy clubs.

"That's what I guess the goal is at this point: to become a road comic," he says. "My kids should be done with college in the next couple of years, so it would be nice if my wife would be able to see the country that way."

In some ways Pfahler is surprised that he ever made it onto a stage. "I always enjoyed going to shows, but I never had the guts to get up on stage myself," he admits. That changed, however, when he took the Comedy 101 workshop from local comedian Mike Veneman in 1994.

"There was a group of us there," he says. "That way, if I was going to die, they were going to go down with me."

Pfahler began doing open mike nights, most of which went fairly well. It wasn't until a couple of years later that he encountered "the big bomb."

"First the guy introduced me as Bill instead of Walle," he remembers. "For some reason, I felt that I had to explain that to the audience. Then, after that, I couldn't remember anything. If you would have asked me my name, I couldn't have told you at that point. I just walked off stage after about a minute."

But things have changed for the better. Pfahler has been emceeing at Hilarities in Cuyahoga Falls, where he also does frequent guest sets. His best time was a three-day run as the opening act at Jr.'s Last Laugh in Erie, Pa.: "That was like a vacation for me."

Pfahler's first comic heroes were those he saw on television. He lists Red Skelton, Johnny Carson and Jonathan Winters among his comedic influences. He says getting the chance to meet national headliners like Blake Clark made him believe that becoming a comic was not an impossibility.

"First, I saw them as these godlike creatures. But they're just like normal people — almost," he says.

Pfahler says his act pokes fun at "the stupid, funny things that we all do. I figure we usually laugh about it later. We might as well laugh about it now."

Anyone listening to Pfahler's act will hear about stupid people, ugly people, his wife, "a hefty mother," and the trials and tribulations of trying to maintain any kind of relationship.

"I don't really tell jokes," he adds. "I can't memorize them. I do stories with some one-liners thrown in there."

He chuckles at the fact that he doesn't get much feedback from his family: "My family doesn't know what to say. I think they're afraid if they say something, it will become part of the act."

Pfahler says he doesn't believe comics that are joke machines are as popular as they once were.

"Now I think you have to relate to the audience and somehow make it believable to them," he says.

ON STAGE: Angel Salazar headlines through Sunday at the Cleveland Improv with George Kanter and Steve Wilson also on the bill. Spark Man is the headliner through Saturday at Hilarities in Cuyahoga Falls.

Sandy Baker and Leave 'Em Laughing Productions will perform a free show at 7 tonight at Borders in Severance Town Center, 3466 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights.

Rodney Bengston, an editor in Sun Newspapers' Metro office, covers northeastern Ohio's comedy scene.